


and there was peace

by littlebell_captain



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Epilogue, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27520963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlebell_captain/pseuds/littlebell_captain
Summary: the bly manor epilogue“It's where all its beauty lies, you know. In the mortality of the thing.”
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	and there was peace

**Author's Note:**

> jamie & dani remind me too much of my first love and this is me coping. i hope you find closure and peace here. ❤️

The morning after Flora’s wedding, the gardner returned home, away from the States and back to the apartment she had shared with the woman she loved most back in England. It’s different now than all those years before. Emptier. Too quiet. The only thing that hadn’t changed are the plants, the last bit of life in the hollowed place.

The flower shop below, The Leafling, is all that is left of them. Once she had said to the au pair, the first time she showed her the moonflowers, “so much better to see the leafing and the flower”. Dani was the moonflower, and this is the leafling. They never had time to have children of their own, aside from Flora, the closest thing they have to a daughter, whose peace Jamie is still protecting. There was always the impending end, the lady in the lake, her one last ghost. So, they poured love into The Leafing instead, and into all the people whose love stories their flowers help write. A bouquet on a first date. Flowers on the kitchen counter. A bride’s wedding bouquet. Flowers at a funeral. Like punctuation in the sentence of a love, and a life.

Every day, the gardner wakes up, and spends too long staring into the mirror, trying to find a trace of the woman she still loves in the reflection. She makes breakfast for one in the kitchen and eats alone, the English rain and occasional sunshine for company. All day, customers come and go, and she chooses the perfect flower arrangement for their occasion. The ones who always come back, time after time, she tells stories to, wisdom and hope between the words. Every night, she returns home to an empty apartment, and listens for the sound of water running, or a movie playing from the bedroom. But there is only silence. She falls asleep alone, in a cold bed, and imagines being held by the arms that kept her warm for thirteen years all those moons ago. It almost feels real. A fantom hand on her shoulder. 

The gardener ages too fast, too soon. It’s what heartbreak does to a person. The sharp edges of her younger self smoothes out with the sands of time, slipping through her fingers. She ages with grace, never touching a strand of her gray hair, and accepts simplicity. She visits Owen in Paris often. She has stayed in contact with Flora, more of a guardian angel than anything else, the occasional piece of advice tucked into a letter, a family photo of Flora’s children. 

Jamie senses it, the end. There is this stillness to mortality. She asks Owen to accompany her back to Bly, one final time, where her love began, and where her life will end. She spends her final weeks there, fading by the day. There is a surge of energy that hits patients right before they die, one last taste of the fullness of life, a reminder that death only happens because they have lived. When the surge comes in the dark of a summer night, Owen holds her one last time, and reluctantly lets go, watching as the gardener wades into the lake, and drifts away.

Below the water, Dani has frozen in time, still in that velvet dress, her blonde hair rippling in the slow moving water, still young and beautiful. Of course. Her face never faded, because she was never forgotten. Jamie’s love saved Dani from oblivion, and saved Jamie herself from loneliness, even if it never spare her grief. The blue eyes of the woman she loves the most, her best friend and the love of her life, is the last thing she sees before the water takes her away. Somewhere in the chapel, the cook lights two candles, and then a third.

Dani’s body breaks down into the water, and takes Viola’s soul with it, for good. The lady of the lake becomes the lake. Jamie’s body breaks down into the earth at the bottom of the lake, into the rich soil. Back into the circle of life they go. Organic. Finite. Together. 

For the rest of time, two ghosts would pace the grounds of Bly. A young woman in a pink sweater, marching through the halls, like a one woman storm. A gardner in dungarees and a flannel, young again, breathing life into the leaflings and the flowers of the place, overgrown ivy scaling the walls, moonflowers that grow surprisingly well in the English climate. 

And then was peace.


End file.
